CE Pro Podcast

With crowded booths and a lot of static and active product demonstrations, the Expo certainly delivered on the promise to show the latest products to attendees. This year’s bumper crop of products was arguably the most diverse in the history of the CEDIA Expo. 

In the CE Pro Podcast recap editors Jason Knott and Arlen Schweiger, along with Commercial Integrator’s editor Dan Ferrisi noted the show featured products from a wide swath of exhibitors, including traditional AV companies, as well as the control and automation manufacturers; networking companies, and newer manufacturers to the market such as wellness, lighting and unified communications (UC).

CEDIA Expo 2022 is right around the corner and CE Pro’s resident “Video Guys” are not only excited to see the latest products during the annual trade event, they are eagerly anticipating the show’s training opportunities. 

Joel Silver, CEO and lead developer, Imaging Science Foundation (ISF); Jason Dustal of Murideo; and Robert Zohn, president and founder of Value Electronics, point out the CEDIA Expo show is a valuable event for dealers for a numbers. They joined the CE Pro Podcast to discuss the upcoming tradeshow in Dallas, as well as cover Value Electronics’ annual TV shootout.

If you’ve done work with designers and architects, you know that they are looking for design-minded or discreet solutions for technology. Two trending categories that can help integrators win over those trade partners on projects – and their customers – are motorized shades and voice control. 

And speaking of those categories, Brittany Mier y Teran, Partnerships and CI Channel Manager for North America, Somfy; and Casey Levy-Tulloch, Manager of Business Strategy and Partnerships Team, Josh.ai, talk about the benefits of their latest integration partnership in this week’s CE Pro Podcast episode. The motors and window treatments provider and voice command and AI specialist stand to help their dealers make inroads in the design department thanks to the recent announcement.

With the summer winding down the members of the CE Pro All-Star Band are ramping their efforts up. More specifically, the guys are deep into their practice routines working towards making their now annual appearance at the CEDIA Expo 2022 event as memorable as possible. 
Coming off a three-year break in their live performances, band members are excited to play two sets of classic rock songs in front of their co-workers, peers and friends at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas. 
Taking time from their work schedules and practice regimes, band members took some time to look ahead to what it will feel like to play at the expo and they discuss the setlists in this episode of the CE Pro Podcast. 

As you walk past the storefronts at the Boston Design Center, the System 7 showroom doesn’t stand out too much from the other design storefronts. However, that reason alone is why it stands out so much, as despite looking like a lighting showroom, it is secretly a technology experience center in disguise.

While System 7 still engages in the traditional AV installation (after all it was Lynch’s start in the industry) the company has invested heavily in lighting and shading, even hiring multiple design consultants to join the System 7 team.

It’s all a part of the approach System 7 and its founder and president Gerard Lynch takes when it comes to technology: the design should always be measured by its simplicity, reliability and beauty, not just by bits and bytes. 

Wireless audio has come a long way, and one company that continues to propel the technology in exciting directions is Enclave Audio. Rob Jones, chief technology officer, discusses how easy it is for dealers to install and calibrate full wireless surround-sound systems, advantages over soundbars, where wireless audio might be headed next and more in this week’s podcast episode.

To make the category enticing for dealers and customers, Enclave Audio offers WiSA-based wireless surround-sound bundles from its CineHome and CineHome Pro lineup. The company has focused on theater solutions and easily-installed upgrades to soundbars, with the wireless option expanding the potential customer pool for 5.1 systems.

When we challenged integrators to submit pictures of the oldest piece of gear on their inventory shelves for our Oldest Gear Contest, we couldn’t have expected the oldest product to be straight out of the 1970s. Yet, the fact that our first ever Oldest Gear winner said he probably has OLDER stuff lying around somewhere speaks to an issue in the custom integration industry: inventory management.
Tom Loveitt, Design/Sales, Canfield Systems, submitted what is surely the oldest piece of gear during this round of these awards. He says it’s been sitting on Canfield’s shelves since well before he was with the company. Loveitt chats about it in this episode, which also includes CE Pro senior web editor Adam Forziati's discussion with James Foxall of contest sponsor Tigerpaw Software.

The power conditioning and power protection category might not have the wow factor of audio video components or pizzazz of automation programming, but it could be the most mission-critical in a dealer’s portfolio. After all, it’s the components that are protecting – and even improving the performance – all the other equipment in a rack. 

Torus Power president Kevin Main talks about his company’s unique power technologies to help integrators amp up their systems, set up a proper power foundation and deliver clean power in this week’s CE Pro Podcast.

The company has a deep background in toroidal power transformers, Main explains, dating back to the mid-1980s when it OEM’d power supplies for high-performance audio companies. He says Torus Power worked with the likes of Krell, Bryston, Pass Labs, Mark Levinson, McIntosh and others “where we kind of cut our teeth” in the audio world, he says.

It also made toroidal transformers for medical equipment manufacturers, and around 2006 Torus Power began delivering clean audio to AV systems in the CEDIA channel, centered on the toroidal isolation transformer.

Forget about those old photos of Aunt Margie or the antique clock on the mantel over the fireplace, that space has now become the prime location for the TV. And as they say, "necessity is the mother of invention," which is why MantelMount was created. For integrators, the solution solves a myriad of potential problems related to screen height, viewing distance and viewing angle. 

“MantelMount was born out of necessity to solve the problems that are inherent with needing to put a TV over a fireplace,” says Lee Marc, CEO, on this week's CE Pro Podcast. “These days you’ve got fireplace mantel pushing 4.5 to 5 feet; you’ve got 60- to 80-inch TVs that have come down in price considerably, and you have a lot more modern homes being built with an open concept. They have an open kitchen wall with the family room, and one wall is usually the backyard. And really, the only place to put your TV is over the fireplace.”

Marc explains that the combination of the large TV and tall mantel unfortunately can leave residents with their necks cocked upwards dramatically.

As the custom installation world becomes more entrenched in areas such as lighting fixtures and power of ethernet, battlegrounds are developing between the worlds of low-voltage electronics and high-voltage electrical. The natural evolution of the technology has led integrators to expand into these growing areas, while electricians in many cases look to “protect their turf” by working to have local and state municipalities pass potentially restrictive laws against CE pros.

That’s when CEDIA’s often-unheralded role of advocacy for the industry becomes so important. 

At the upcoming CEDIA Expo 2022 in Dallas, CEDIA will be holding its first-ever Advocacy Town Hall open to all attendees. At this breakfast event on Thursday, September 29, attendees are asked to come ready to share information and find out how they can work together with CEDIA to advocate for the industry. CEDIA CEO Daryl Friedman and director of government affairs joined the podcast to tell us more details.